Ray Longo finally got the answer he wanted from Tom Nolan. It just arrived four days late, on a different show, after the whole sport had already picked sides.
Quick refresher for anyone who spent last weekend off the grid. Nolan beat Renato Moicano by TKO in the UFC Vegas 123 main event on Saturday, the biggest win of his career and the latest in a run BJPenn.com puts at six straight. Minutes before the finish, though, Moicano had him tied up on the mat, and Nolan himself says Moicano had his back. Dan Miragliotta saw what he judged to be low activity and stood them up. The reset gave Nolan a fresh look on the feet, and he cashed it in. Joe Rogan called the call a scar on the sport. Daniel Cormier wants athletic commissions to penalize Miragliotta. It got ugly fast.
Then Nolan got the microphone and, according to BJPenn.com, didn’t address the stand-up directly. That’s the part that set Longo off.
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Longo Swung Hard
On the Anik & Florian Podcast, the veteran coach went after Nolan’s post-fight handling of the whole mess.
“I kind of feel bad for Tom Nolan. I liked him going in; I don’t even know if I like him coming out, which is bad,” Longo said.
He kept going. “I think he handled it really badly on the mic afterwards. You got gifted something. You couldn’t get out. Your answer was to elbow the thigh.”
That’s a brutal scouting report, and the “elbow the thigh” line is the kind of detail only a coach notices. Longo’s point is that Nolan was losing that exchange and had no real escape plan.
Wednesday Nolan Showed Up
On Ariel Helwani’s program Wednesday, Nolan sounded like a different guy than the one who skipped past it in the cage.
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“I’d be pissed off if that was me and I had the back and it got stood up, for sure,” he said. “I don’t think he should have stood that up, but I do think the crowd had a big influence on him.”
That’s a fighter saying the referee got it wrong, and that a Vegas crowd booing a grappling exchange pushed him into it. Plenty of guys would never say that out loud about their own career-best win. Nolan also admitted the stand-up tainted the victory and said it’ll change how he fights going forward.
“Unfortunately, moving forward in all my fights, I feel like I’m gonna have to monitor what the referee’s doing as well,” he said. “I don’t want this to happen again. It’s not fair on anyone.”
Think about how absurd that is. A UFC lightweight now has to scout the third man in the cage like he’s a second opponent. That quote should bother the commissions more than anything Rogan said on commentary.
And then the rematch offer. “If he wanted it, in a heartbeat, I would give him that opportunity,” Nolan said, adding that he didn’t want to disrespect Moicano or call him out.
My Take: Give Him Most of the Credit, Keep a Little Back
Longo is right that Saturday’s mic moment was a whiff. When half the arena thinks you got bailed out, you grab the mic and say it before anyone asks. Nolan waited until Wednesday, and by then it looked a lot like damage control after a respected coach said he might not even like you anymore.
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But Longo going all the way to “I don’t even know if I like him” is too much. Nolan didn’t make the call. Miragliotta did. Blaming the guy who got stood up and then finished the fight is like being mad at the wrestler in the Montreal Screwjob who wasn’t holding the bell. Longo’s own follow-up, that the UFC wants knockouts and “this is getting crazy,” reads to me like his real target is bigger than one lightweight from Australia. Aim there.
Where Nolan gives back some of the goodwill is the stuff he stacked on top of the apology. He told Helwani he still thinks the fight was going the same way, that Moicano “wasn’t having a great deal of success on the back,” and that a rematch would go “very similar, but a lot earlier.” Nolan saying that is like a guy saying he’d have won the hand anyway after the dealer flashed him the river card. Maybe he’s right. He’s also the one guy on earth who can’t sell that argument, and Longo watched the same tape and saw a fighter who couldn’t get out.
The rematch offer also costs Nolan nothing right now. BJPenn.com reports Moicano isn’t appealing the loss and is heading into free agency. Offering a heartbeat rematch to a guy who may be walking out the door is the safest generous thing a fighter can say.
Still, the Helwani version of Tom Nolan is the one I’d want representing the division. He named the mistake, he named the crowd, and he said the outcome should bother everybody, including him. If Moicano re-signs and wants it, the UFC should book it immediately and Nolan should have to back up that “over pretty quickly” line. If Moicano walks, this win stays in Nolan’s record with an asterisk only he can scrub off, and he’ll have to do it against whoever the UFC lines up next.
